


Two Pints

by SadinaSaphrite



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Christmas fic, Fluff, M/M, Major Character Injury, Null Sector Terrorist Attack, Pining, Post-Recall, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:14:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21942772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadinaSaphrite/pseuds/SadinaSaphrite
Summary: Hanzo wanted to give McCree a gift, something meaningful, something that appropriately symbolized how deeply he cared for him. But what? What gift could possibly be good enough?How couldhepossibly be good enough?******My Gift toKalikuksfor the Target Practice Holiday Secret Santa 2019!
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Comments: 10
Kudos: 220





	Two Pints

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kalikuks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalikuks/gifts).



December came with a flurry of activity to the Rock of Gibraltar. With her army of eager volunteers and less-enthusiastic drafted helpers, Lena led the charge to decorate every conceivable inch of the Watchpoint. Hanzo fell into the latter of the two categories, his schedule rudely interrupted with requests for him to help string Christmas lights along the rooftops. He almost refused, even in the face of Lena’s pleading puppy-dog eyes and her pointed flattery regarding his ability to scale buildings safely. In any other circumstance, he might have found an excuse to avoid decorating duty altogether. Instead, he spent his afternoon leaping rooftop to rooftop, coiled strings of twinkling lights looped over his shoulders.

“You’re doin’ great, darlin’! Next up is a row of blue lights around the lab, then white around the garages!”

Shouting up from the ground below was the real reason Hanzo willingly sacrificed his afternoon of training in favor of stringing up Christmas lights. McCree was much more enthusiastic about Christmas than Hanzo, and had jumped at the opportunity to become one of the lieutenants in Lena’s decorating army. When McCree asked him for help, Hanzo couldn’t refuse. Hanzo would do anything for Jesse McCree.

He just wished McCree knew that.

They’d been friends and training partners for just shy of a year now, and what started as respect and physical attraction had grown into something more. McCree was intelligent and witty, with a sharp sense of humor that complimented Hanzo’s own dry sarcasm. He was incredibly skilled, and Hanzo didn’t know he had a competency kink until he saw McCree take out six Talon agents with a single bullet each, all within the span of one breath and the next. He was haunted by the same demons as Hanzo. They shared many of the same struggles and vices. How many nights had they spent sitting under the stars on a balcony or rooftop, drinking and sharing their darkest fears and secrets? McCree understood him in a way no one else ever had.

They were close friends, brothers in arms, but Hanzo’s heart yearned for something more. McCree’s lopsided smile, his deep laugh, his confident swagger, his gentle touch, and countless other mannerisms sent Hanzo’s heart aflutter. Judging by the secret stolen glances and fond gazes Hanzo sometimes caught McCree giving him, he was hopeful that McCree felt the same, and the Christmas season was the perfect time to finally confess his feelings.

Christmas in Japan wasn’t anything close to the gigantic affair Western cultures made it out to be. Christmas Eve was more prominent than Christmas Day, and it was more of a couple’s holiday, similar to Valentine’s Day in the West. It was a season of romantic significance, a time of joy and new beginnings for the new year. It was perfect.

Or would be, if Hanzo had any idea how to go about confessing his feelings. He wanted to give McCree a gift, something meaningful, something that appropriately symbolized how deeply he cared for him. But what? What gift could possibly be good enough?

How could _he_ possibly be good enough?

Hanzo shoved that unpleasant thought into a dark corner of his mind. Now was not the time for old self-doubts and loathing to come clawing back, not after all the growth and support he’d had over the past year. It was time to look forward, not back.

Though that still didn’t answer the question of what to get McCree.

The question haunted Hanzo long after the Watchpoint decorations were complete. People excitedly chatted about gift ideas over meals, in the rec room, even over the comms on missions.

“I found this darling top, and I’m thinking of getting it for Emily, but I already got her the earrings, you know?”

“Lena.”

“But it’s just this lovely shade of emerald, and I think it’ll bring out her eyes, but it doesn’t match the earrings?”

“Lena, focus.”

“To hell with it, I’m getting both!”

None of it helped. McCree was surprisingly difficult to shop for at the best of times. It didn’t seem that way at first glance. McCree liked Westerns, firearms, motorcycles, and horses, all of which had a plethora of gift ideas, but Hanzo knew McCree well enough to know that wouldn’t cut it. Perhaps it was due to years of being on the run and living sparse, or perhaps he just preferred a simple lifestyle, but McCree didn’t want for much. Trinkets and memorabilia were superfluous and took up space without serving any purpose, and Hanzo didn’t want that message linked to a symbol of his affection.

McCree was also sentimental and very attached to his current things. Buying him a new hat, boots, or gaudy belt buckle would be an atrocity, and he’d be asking McCree to discard something worn and loved for something new, unfamiliar, and likely uncomfortable. Getting anything to alter Peacekeeper was out of the question. McCree wouldn’t want that as much as Hanzo wouldn’t want anyone touching Storm Bow. He supposed he could buy him ammunition, but that felt so…impersonal. It was as bland as a gift card.

Flowers were beautiful, but fleeting. They died quickly, which was a bad precedent to set for a confession of undying love. Food and treats were also temporary with the same message.

The gift couldn’t be too extravagant, either. Knowing Hanzo had spent a great deal of money on him would make McCree uncomfortable. That ruled out anything big like a motorcycle, jewelry, or bribing official channels into dropping McCree’s bounty.

He wanted something with meaning and significance. Perhaps he could make something, create a gift and pour his heart into it. He could make a decorative arrow, but that ran into the same issue as memorabilia. Where would McCree put it? Their lodgings were small and didn’t leave room for decoration.

Maybe a pendant made out of an arrowhead. That idea had merit. He could sand down one of his broadheads, dulling the sharp edges, and string it on a rope or a chain. Hanging over McCree’s chest, it would carry the significance of keeping Hanzo near his heart. Except Hanzo had never seen McCree wear any sort of jewelry, not even a watch. Maybe he didn’t like the feeling of anything more constricting than a serape around his neck. The thought of constriction led Hanzo’s mind down a darker path, imagining a scenario where an enemy on the battlefield grabbed the pendant and used the chain to choke McCree. The concept that his gift of love could be used to hurt McCree made Hanzo sick, and he discarded the idea with a measure of disappointment.

What about an experience, instead of an object? Something that will give them both memories to cherish. Hanzo looked into horse-riding along the Gibraltar beaches, catching a holo-vid in a theater, or going to a concert. All of those required reservations or tickets, and with their erratic schedules, committing to a reservation just wasn’t feasible. It was too likely that they’d be sent out on a last minute mission, or be too burnt out from a previous mission to want to go out.

Hanzo fretted for weeks, growing more and more frantic as Christmas drew nearer and he was no closer to finding an appropriate gift. Christmas Eve came and Hanzo was still lacking a gift when a distraction came from an unexpected source. There’d been a bombing in Cairo, a city that was still recovering from the devastation of the Omnic Crisis thirty years ago, and Overwatch was going to help with the relief effort. There weren’t many of them still at the Watchpoint, most agents choosing to go home and spend time with their families over the holidays, but the remaining agents geared up and shipped out as the sun set over Christmas Eve.

The flight from Gibraltar to Cairo wasn’t long, only a few hours, and conversation stayed focused on the mission, discussing possible suspects for the attack, primarily Talon or Null Sector, what resources the Egyptian government was providing, and “What kind of asshole bombs a bridge on Christmas Eve?”

Once on the ground, they split off into pairs. Winston and Hana in her MEKA started clearing rubble, moving heavy structures to clear space and free survivors. Baptiste and Mei tended to the injured humans and damaged omnics, while Hanzo and McCree set about the somber task of collecting the dead.

Due to the grim nature of their work, they didn’t speak much as they searched the rubble for those left behind by the medical teams. Finally, McCree broke the silence as he checked his phone.

“Midnight. Can’t say this is how I planned on spending my Christmas.”

“No,” Hanzo said. “Neither did I.”

“Yeah? What did you have in mind?”

That was an excellent question. What _did_ he plan? He’d been so wrapped up in finding the perfect gift that he didn’t think about what he would actually do on Christmas. Winston would likely cook them all a big breakfast, some people would exchange gifts, but then what? He looked at McCree, illuminated by the harsh work lights, and his heart melted.

He wanted to spend time with McCree. He wanted to lay against him on a couch and watch cliché Holiday movies while McCree rambled on about actors and behind the scenes footage. He wanted to watch snowflakes fall through a frosted window as they drank hot cider. He wanted to curl up together under a kotatsu and fall asleep in each other’s arms.

Gift be damned. He wanted McCree.

“I–” Hanzo took a step forward, but was cut off by an upheld finger from McCree.

“Do you hear that?”

Hanzo froze. To the left was a faint, irregular scratching in the rubble.

“A survivor?” he asked.

“Might be!” McCree turned and ran toward the sound, Hanzo on his heels. “Hey, we’re coming! Where are you?”

The scratching grew faster and more frantic. McCree started digging through the rubble while Hanzo activated his communicator.

“Hanzo reporting, we may have found a survivor the medical teams missed. Attempting extraction from the wreckage now. We are located at the southwest corner of the wreckage, requesting a medical team to our location–”

McCree pulled a sheet of corrugated metal off the survivor, and Hanzo caught a glimpse of familiar purple paint that made his blood run cold.

“Null Sector!”

There was no time to react, no time to do _anything_ before the half-buried Null Sector trooper raised its weaponized arm and fired at McCree. McCree cried out with a howl that would haunt Hanzo’s nightmares. Hanzo drew his bow and fired two arrows into the omnic’s CPU, silencing it forever, but the damage was already done.

“ _McCree!_ ”

McCree lay sprawled on his back, a hole pierced through his body armor, blood already soaking through his clothing. Hanzo dropped to his knees and put pressure on the wound in McCree’s abdomen, his heart breaking with the pained noise McCree made.

“Null Sector presence on site, McCree needs immediate medical attention!”

Hanzo heard some kind of affirmation in his ear, but his attention was taken up by the grimace on McCree’s face and the blood soaking between his fingers.

“S-shit,” McCree stammered. “No good deed, am I right?”

“Hush,” Hanzo scolded. “Try not to talk. Help is on the way, so stay with me, alright? Stay with me.”

McCree craned his head downward.

“Shit…That’s a helluva lot of blood.” McCree coughed and groaned. “Merry fuckin’ Christmas. What a bullshit way to go…”

“Don’t you _dare!_ ” Hanzo snapped, fear channeling into anger. Hanzo’s heart raced as blood continued to seep from the wound, heedless of his attempts to stop it. “Don’t you dare start talking that way! You are going to hold on, the team will arrive and we will stabilize you, then we’ll spend Christmas together watching stupid movies and bitching about the hospital food, so don’t you _dare_ give up on yourself!”

McCree was struck silent and stared up at Hanzo with a shocked expression. Hanzo bit the inside of his lip, tears stinging the corners of his eyes.

“…I’ll try, darlin’,” McCree said softly. He reached up and gently cupped Hanzo’s cheek. “I don’t want to leave you.”

McCree’s gloved hand was coarse against Hanzo’s cheek, the leather covered in dirt and grime from the rubble, but Hanzo leaned into the touch nonetheless.

“Stay with me,” Hanzo whispered. He reached up close his blood-soaked fingers over McCree’s hand. “I love you.”

A car horn blared loudly behind them and Hanzo snapped his head over in time to see the headlights of a hover-van rocking unsteadily over the debris, the antigrav not working well over the uneven surface. The van pulled to a halt and the back doors blew open as Baptiste barreled out.

“How is he?”

Hanzo looked back and his heart missed a beat. McCree was unconscious, his hand limp in Hanzo’s.

“Single shot to the abdomen, and he’s lost a lot of blood. He lost consciousness just now,” Hanzo said, his voice more steady than he felt. He helped Baptiste gather McCree up and move him into the van, and Hanzo felt sick at the size of the bloodstain they left behind.

Baptiste looked McCree over with the cool efficiency of a combat medic as the van set off over the uneven terrain.

“I’ve patched worse, but he’s already lost a lot of blood, and we’ve already used all our reserves on the civilians,” Baptiste said. “Under normal circumstances, I’d say he’ll be fine, but without more blood…”

“Take mine,” Hanzo said without hesitation. “I’m O Negative.”

“That’ll work!”

It took far too long for Hanzo’s tastes for Baptiste to get an IV catheter in both of them and an infusion set connected between them. Baptiste patched the hole in McCree’s side, the most he could do until they could get McCree to a surgeon. Hanzo sat in silence as they drove, watching his blood flow through the filtered infusion set into McCree’s arm, and prayed that he saw color returning to McCree’s bronze skin, and not just a trick of the van’s dim light.

The next few hours were a blur. The hospitals were overrun with civilians injured in the now-confirmed Null Sector attack, the hospitals understaffed and undersupplied to deal with the onslaught of injuries. Once McCree was stabilized, the team loaded up the Orca and flew back to Watchpoint Gibraltar and the high-tech Overwatch medical wing, where Angela would be waiting for them, having flown back from Sweden with Torbjorn, Brigitte, and Reinhardt upon hearing the news. Hanzo waited in the van, waited in the crowded Cairo hospital, waited on the Orca, waited in the fucking Watchpoint waiting room, and waited until Angela came out from surgery to tell him that McCree would make a full recovery, he would be fine but right now he needed rest, no visitors, no he wasn’t awake yet, and _mein Gott,_ Hanzo you look terrible, it’s nearly nine in the morning, go get some sleep and quite possibly a shower.

When it became clear that Angela wasn’t going to let him see McCree, Hanzo reluctantly took her advice, showered, and despite his anxieties, was exhausted enough to fall asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

He woke up some time later to the sound of his phone chiming with a text. He grumbled and fished around blindly for his phone. He fumbled with it a while longer before finally getting the text to pull up and squinted at it, waiting for the words to make sense to his sleep-addled mind.

McCree was awake.

Hanzo flew out of bed and threw on the first clean clothes he could reach, sweatpants and a T-shirt, and bolted for the infirmary. He arrived to find Angela checking McCree’s vitals and quizzing him on how he felt.

McCree looked well, all things considered. His expression was tired and he moved stiffly, but he was sitting up and even smiled when he caught sight of Hanzo.

“Do you want me to increase your morphine?”

“Nah, you don’t have to do that, Ang. A little soreness ain’t gonna be the end of the world.”

“Very well, let me know if you need anything.”

With a nod to Hanzo, Angela left the room. Hanzo took a seat by McCree’s bedside, and found that he didn’t know what to say. McCree saved him the trouble by speaking first.

“Well, I can’t say this is the worst Christmas I’ve had, but getting shot sure as hell puts it up there.”

That surprised a laugh out of Hanzo, and McCree gave him that damn lop-sided grin in response.

“I am merely grateful it was not worse.”

“Me too.”

They fell into silence then. What now? How much did McCree remember? This wasn’t anything at all how Hanzo wanted his confession of feelings to happen, and he didn’t know how to navigate the situation anymore.

“So, I hear you saved my ass,” McCree finally said.

“I feel that credit should go to Baptiste and Dr. Zeigler,” Hanzo said.

“Yeah, but the two pints of blood you gave me sure as hell didn’t hurt.”

“How could I do anything less? You were…” Hanzo couldn’t finish, couldn’t say the words aloud.

“Hey…”

McCree took his hand, the rough, calloused fingers closing around Hanzo’s own.

“It’s okay. I’m okay now,” McCree gently rubbed the back of his hand with his thumb. “Did you mean what you said back there? About…not wantin’ to lose me? About how you…I mean…”

Hanzo’s heart fluttered. No backing down, no turning away. It was time to lay his heart bare, and if he was wrong, he’d take the hit. He looked McCree in the eye.

“Yes.”

McCree blinked owlishly at him.

“So, that’s yes as in…” he trailed off, and Hanzo caught the sparkle of hope in McCree’s eyes.

“Yes, I don’t want to lose you.”

“Okay, but like–”

“I love you, Jesse McCree.”

McCree’s smile took in his ears, and Hanzo found himself mirroring it.

“Well, now that’s somethin’, isn’t it? I mean, I was hopin’ but I didn’t want to presume…I mean, you can never quite tell, and I didn’t want to be…” McCree shook his head. “Goddammit, I’m rambling. I knew I was gonna ramble. Could never say a damn fuckin’ word once I’m all of a flutter. Or too many words, as it would seem. What I mean to say is…I love you, too, Hanzo Shimada.”

He lifted Hanzo’s hand to his lips and gently kissed his knuckles.

“Can’t imagine this is how you planned this conversation playin’ out.”

Hanzo laughed.

“I actually wanted to confess today. I spent the last month agonizing over a gift appropriate enough to express my feelings.”

“Yeah?” McCree asked, seemingly unable to stop grinning, though Hanzo could hardly blame him. “And what did you come up with?”

“Absolutely nothing. I couldn’t find anything meaningful enough.”

McCree laughed.

“Well, two pints of blood seems pretty damn meaningful to me,” he kissed Hanzo’s knuckles again, then the back of his hand, then his wrist. “Besides, no gift in the world could mean as much as you.”

Hanzo laughed and leaned in close. As their lips touched, his heart soared.

Despite everything, this was possibly his best Christmas yet.


End file.
